Jaune tried to move but nothing happened.
The command went out from his brain, but his body did not respond. Like the connection between thought and action had been quietly severed.
A pulse of alarm surged through him.
He tried again.
His fingers and arms. Anything.
Still nothing.
Then, slowly, his hand started moving.
Not because he willed it to but because something else did.
His fingers flexed, curling inward and then extending again, the motion smooth and almost curious, as if testing the limits of the form it now inhabited. Jaune felt it happen, felt the sensation travel through his awareness, but there was no ownership behind it.
It was like watching his own body from a half-step behind.
"Oi kid. You good? Is your rune functioning right?"
Qrow's voice reached him, cutting through the rising tension.
Jaune tried to answer but he couldn't.
The shadow that made up his body began to shift.
It crept upward along his form, a slow, invasive movement that flowed like liquid darkness across his torso and neck. It climbed toward his face, reshaping his face.
The last thing Raven and Qrow saw of his original expression were his eyes.
Alarmed.
Then the shadow covered them and his body began to shrink.
The elongated proportions pulled inward, condensing, compressing and reforming. The unnatural height receded as his frame adjusted, contouring back toward his original shape. The change wasn't violent, but it was deeply unnatural.
Qrow stepped forward, one hand already reaching out.
"Jaune. Talk to me. You good?"
Jaune heard him but he just could not respond.
Inside, his thoughts raced.
Analyze, understand and fix.
The first conclusion came quickly. The consciousness of the Stalker had clearly not been destroyed when he used Plunder on it.
Instead, it had been absorbed into his own body.
Plunder had not functioned as it normally did. It didn't latch onto a stat through a tether. It had taken everything. The creature's entire existence had been folded into his own.
Jaune tried to release Plunder. Instinctively, he reached for the rune, searching for the familiar connection that he could sever.
Except that there was nothing there.
The feedback from his rune told him that there was no connection to untether from. There was nothing to separate.
He and the Stalker were one entity now.
His Weakness sense, the entire time had been flaring violently.
It screamed at him, flooding his awareness by telling him that his entire body registered as a giant vulnerability. A complete, overwhelming weak point. Every part of him felt exposed, unstable, as if the foundation of his existence had been compromised.
He forced himself to ignore it.
Panic would not help.
'Think Jaune. The Stalker's controlling your body. How is it doing that?'
Umbra.
That was the only connection that Jaune could think of.
Except…
No.
That didn't fit.
Jaune could feel not just its emotions, but something deeper. The presence within him was not pushing with energy. It was not flooding him with Umbra or overwhelming his Aura or Will through some metaphysical force.
Jaune didn't understand.
The only thing that he could do clench his focus and draw his Aura inward. He forced it outward again, circulating it through his body, reinforcing his presence and asserting control. His Will followed, pressing down, attempting to purge the foreign influence from within.
From the outside, his body lit up.
Faint at first, then brighter, until his entire form shimmered with energy. It resembled a star-filled sky, tiny points of light flickering within the shadow that composed him.
Qrow's eyes narrowed.
Raven watched without blinking.
Jaune pushed harder.
It should have worked.
His Aura protected him from metaphysical damage. His Will could also resisted external influence. Anything that was not born from a meta rune should have been forced out.
That was how it had always worked.
That was how it should work.
But it wasn't.
The presence inside him did not retreat or weaken.
If anything, it responded in a strange manner.
Jaune felt it.
There was no hostility or resentment.
If anything, the creature was feeling...
Glee?
A sharp, almost delighted emotion pulsed through the shared consciousness, followed by something deeper. Satisfaction and interest.
It was… enjoying this.
Jaune's focus wavered for a fraction of a second, confusion cutting through his concentration.
Why?
Why would it react like that?
His Aura surged again, pushing harder, attempting to force the influence out through sheer force of will.
Nothing.
It remained unmoved and unshaken.
Unbeknownst to jaune his face had already transformed into the likeness of the stalker.
From the outside, Raven and Qrow saw it clearly.
The white eyes and unnatural grin, looking back at them.
Raven didn't hesitate. "That's not Jaune."
The spear in her hand dissolved into shadow, and in the same motion, tendrils erupted from the ground beneath Jaune. They wrapped around him instantly, binding his arms, his legs, his torso, locking him in place with overwhelming force.
This time, the body resisted greatly.
It strained against the bindings with far more intensity than before. The strength behind the movement was immediate and undeniable, muscles that were not muscles flexing with unnatural force.
But Raven's control was absolute.
Jaune felt the strain from both sides and then, suddenly, something clicked.
The realization came all at once.
It wasn't exactly using Umbra to control him. While it was true that it's body was Umbra, manifest, it wasn't directly utilizing the energy to override his control. The reason was, because it didn't need to.
Jaune's current form, his shadow body, lacked his Body stat. It was equivalent to a normal human. Functional, but limited.
The Stalker's body was not.
Even as a shadow, its physical capability far exceeded that baseline. It operated at a level that rivaled, or even matched, a Rank 1's physicality.
The Stalker did not need to overpower his Will or bypass his Aura. It simply moved, and because it's proverbial "Body stat" was simply higher than his, it could ignore his input entirely and move the body by itself.
It was like two minds inhabiting the same vessel. Except one of them had a far stronger grip on the controls.
And right now, he was losing.
For a few long seconds, Jaune did nothing.
If brute force wasn't working, then forcing harder would be a waste of time and energy. That much was already clear.
It was winning through something far simpler. A stronger Body. That was all.
'Alright…' he thought, grounding himself. 'Your body might be stronger, but I have something that you don't have access to. Runes. Which means... I just have to flip the game board over completely.'
The Stalker kept straining against Raven's bindings, almost eager to be released and test itself out. It was adapting and learning the limits of the restraints, testing them with increasing intensity.
Jaune felt all of it.
The hunger, the curiosity and the strange, warped satisfaction that pulsed beneath its consciousness.
It wanted Jaune.
Not as an enemy or as prey in the traditional sense.
But as something to consume and become. It had been attracted to Jaune because it had felt the power of his meta runes. It wanted that power for itself.
That realization settled into place with unsettling clarity.
When he had used Plunder, it hadn't resisted. Not that it really could resist, but instead of even attempting to resist, it had welcomed it.
That surge of emotion he had felt earlier, that flash of glee, that had not been confusion or pain.
It had been joy. The Stalker had believed that it had won.
Jaune's lips twitched faintly beneath the shadow that still clung to his face.
'Yeah,' he thought quietly. 'Not happening.'
His mind stilled.
And then, instead of pushing outward, he turned inward with Weakness.
If the Stalker's advantage was its superior "body," then that was the point of attack.
Weakness, being a meta rune, functioned as a rune that could even affect concepts. It didn't care about categories. Whether something was physical, conceptual, or somewhere in between didn't matter. It only cared about one thing.
Finding the point where something could be weakened.
The rune was only limited to Jaune's own understanding of weakness and Aura's natural counter against metaphysical power.
Besides, Jaune had already proven something important.
In this realm, his rune could affect things it normally could not.
The ground, constructs and even the Stalker itself. That meant the limitations he had accepted in the real world were not absolute here.
They had been contextual. And now, the context had changed.
"Alright," he thought. "Let's see how far this goes."
He targeted himself, or rather, the shared body.
Normally, when he used Weakness on others, there were limits. Aura resisted him. The effect capped out, dampened and was constrained.
But this?
This was his body. There was no resistance.
No rejection or even a ceiling.
He could push it as far as he understood it. And right now, his understanding was expanding very, very quickly.
Jaune condensed the rune.
A focused stream of weakening intent wrapped around his own form, threading through the shared body, searching for the disparity.
And it found it instantly.
The Stalker's movements halted.
The violent resistance against Raven's bindings ceased as if a switch had been flipped. The hunger did not vanish, but it faltered, stuttering under the sudden pressure.
Then something new surfaced.
Fear.
Jaune felt it flood through the shared consciousness, raw and unfiltered.
The Stalker understood on some level, that this was something it could not fight.
Jaune's eyes sharpened.
'There it is.'
He pushed further and the effect started spreading.
The strength that the Stalker had been relying on, that overwhelming physical dominance, began to erode, diminishing layer by layer, like something being peeled back.
The shadow that had overtaken his form began to recede.
The surface of his face shifted, the unnatural smoothness breaking apart as his own features began to push through.
Jaune inhaled sharply.
Control.
It was coming back.
The Stalker's presence did not vanish, but it shrank, its influence pushed back as its grip on the body loosened under the sustained pressure of Weakness.
"Yeah," he muttered under his breath. "You picked the wrong guy."
He pushed the Weakness further, testing the limit.
The Stalker's form within him began to destabilize more noticeably now. The cohesion of its existence wavered, its structure thinning under the pressure.
And then—
Jaune stopped.
His Weakness sense informed him of something interesting. If he continued and pushed just a little further the Stalker would collapse completely.
Its consciousness would be destroyed and its body, bound to that consciousness, would follow. And the Umbra that composed it would also dissipate.
Jaune paused and thought for a moment.
The option sat there, clear and simple.
End it and erase it. Remove the problem entirely.
His grip on the rune tightened slightly. Then, slowly, he eased off.
"...No."
Not yet.
Instead of crushing it, he refined his control.
The overwhelming pressure of Weakness condensed into something narrower, more precise. A constant stream, focused not on destruction, but suppression.
Jaune shifted focused from the tangible realm into the intangible realm of his mind. Ordinarily this wouldn't have been possible, but due to the merging of their bodies, Jaune had finally felt the existence of another being within his own mind space. And he comprehended something else about his Weakness rune.
If he could feel it...
He could weaken it.
The Stalker's consciousness recoiled under the power of Weakness, shrinking further and further away from the controls of the body.
The fear remained and so did its hunger.
But both were muted and contained.
Jaune straightened slightly as full control over the shared body returned to him.
His body felt… different.
Powerful.
Even in this shadow form, he could feel the difference. The strength in his limbs, the responsiveness of his movements, the sheer capability embedded in the structure of his body.
It was easily on par with his Dream Realm state.
Maybe even beyond it in some states.
He flexed his fingers once, testing the motion.
Smooth and controlled.
His.
Across from him, Raven's eyes narrowed but she did not release the bindings.
"Talk," she said flatly.
Jaune exhaled, rolling his shoulders slightly as he adjusted to the new equilibrium.
"It's me," he said.
Qrow tilted his head slightly, studying him.
"How do we know it's really you?"
Jaune sighed faintly.
"Well, for one, I didn't kill it," he said. "Plunder didn't just take its stats. It took everything. Its body, its consciousness, all of it merged with mine."
Raven's grip on the tendrils tightened slightly, though her expression remained unchanged.
"And?"
"And it was controlling me," Jaune continued. "Not with Umbra but with its raw physical strength. Its 'body' was stronger than mine in this state, so it just moved."
Qrow's brow furrowed.
"And now?"
Jaune lifted a hand slightly.
"I used Weakness on myself. Targeted its influence and sort of stripped away its advantage down until I could take control back."
A brief pause.
"I didn't destroy it," he added. "I can. But if I do, the shadow body goes with it."
Raven's eyes flicked over him once more, measuring, calculating.
"And right now?"
Jaune met her gaze evenly.
"I'm suppressing it. I just learnt how to weaken consciousness using my rune. It's still there. But it can't act."
Silence stretched for a moment.
Then, slowly, Raven released the tendrils. They receded back into the ground like they had never existed.
Jaune remained standing and unaffected and in control.
Qrow scratched his chin.
"Fuckin hell kid. You had me worried for a second."
Jaune huffed back a laugh. "You kidding me? I thought I was going to die."
Qrow shook his head and patted Jaune's shoulder. "Glad you didn't."
Jaune could sense that Qrow's and Raven emotions were calming down now. Earlier they had been slightly distressed, but ever since Jaune's face reemerged, they had gradually calmed down.
Raven nodded at him.
Qrow then, couldn't help but ask. "So... uh, your body is just a black shadow body now?"
Jaune glanced down at his form. From his neck down, his body was that of a black shadow. His body was still donning a rune frame, but... it had just turned all black and shadow-like. It was quite interesting. This was the manifestation of the Stalker's body mixed with his own.
Jaune let out a few punches and tested his range of motion.
The strength was undeniable but Jaune could still feel the the presence of the Stalker lingering at the edge of his awareness, subdued under a constant stream of weakness. But it wasn't gone. Its emotions still bled through faintly.
It still wanted his power.
Jaune's expression shifted into a curious look as he sensed the changes in his form.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I'm not entirely certain, but I'm almost positive that I can use the Stalker's Umbra energy."